Monthly Archives: October 2008

My friend Bill Otis tells me that a local radio station here in Washington reported today that Joe Biden hasn’t held a news conference since early September, and does not take reporters’ questions on the stump. The Obama campaign has accomplished something impressive — it has caused Talkin’ Joe Biden to clam up. Bill notes that when Sarah Palin “didn’t hold a press conference every six hours,” she was accused »

From Drudge: Zogby’s polling yesterday had John McCain pulling into a one-point lead, 48-47, over Barack Obama. That result is an outlier, I suppose, but Obama has never been able to seal the deal with the voters and quite a few remain undecided, one in seven according to a recent AP poll. Throughout the campaign, McCain has made a series of runs where it looked as though he might catch »

The Washington Post editorial board attacks John McCain for making an issue of Barack Obama’s association with Rashid Khalidi. The Post is disturbed that the McCain campaign characterizes Khalidi as “a PLO spokesman.” But the Los Angeles Times has reported that “when Khalidi taught at a university in Beirut, he often spoke to reporters on behalf of Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization.” And Khalidi’s association with the PLO was evident in »

Peter Wehner has “detected in some of the conservative critics of Sarah Palin . . .a tendency to call attention to the fact that their position has (supposedly) made them, and their dear friends, vilified figures.” Vilified, Peter writes, “means they receive angry e-mails or are on the receiving end of agitated to marginally agitated blog postings.” This “conveniently allows for the opportunity to inject a bit of melodrama into »

The U.S. lost 13 soldiers in Iraq during October, eight in combat, matching the lowest total ever: The sharp drop in American fatalities in Iraq reflects the overall security improvements across the country following the Sunni revolt against al-Qaida and the rout suffered by Shiite extremists in fighting last spring in Basra and Baghdad. When John McCain started his Presidential campaign, the U.S. was in danger of losing Iraq to »

As a kid, I was distinguished from most of my fellows by the fact that I didn’t like the Three Stooges. This was the height of their popularity, and yet I never saw them do or say a single thing that was funny. As an adult, I continue to view the Stooges with the same sort of horror with which some people see clowns. Nevertheless, the Stooges are an apt »

Senator Norm Coleman has sued challenger Al Franken over a new Franken ad that claims Coleman is the “fourth most corrupt” Senator in Washington. Franken’s claim is laughable; the alleged corruption consists of the fact that Coleman rents a room in a friend’s house in Washington for $600 a month. Some “corruption!” What is going on here, of course, is that Norm Coleman, unlike Al Franken and so many other »

Today, Barack Obama accused those who don’t want him to raise their taxes of “selfishness:” This is a classic inversion of the truth, liberal style. It is not selfish to want to keep money that you earned. What is selfish is to try to steal someone else’s money, whether that is done by breaking into his house or by voting for Barack Obama and other Democrats. Another index of selfishness »

We’ve been writing for some years about the fact that America’s income tax system has increasingly concentrated tax liability among the highest income earners. Currently, the top ten percent of American income earners pay 71 percent of all income taxes. Our excessively progressive tax system has created a dangerous situation in which anyone can vote for politicians who promise to deliver goodies by “spreading the wealth,” but only a handful »

In “St. Paul’s going to go for this?,” Kathryn Lopez notes some of Al Franken’s gibes against Catholics and Christianity. Kathryn comments: “These are some of Franken’s greatest hits. I don’t find them funny. Can Minnesota voters?” Kudos to our friend Katherine Kersten, whose column on the subject Lopez cites in her piece this morning. To comment on this post, go here. »

John and I have a column supporting John McCain for president that is forthcoming in Monday’s Christian Science Monitor. Working on the column, it occurred to me that McCain would fit relatively comfortably in the Democratic Party of JFK, which lives on today if at all in the lonely personage of Senator McCain’s friend and supporter Joe Lieberman. McCain himself seems to me beautifully captured in the almost Churchillian quote »

Yesterday Glenn Reynolds made the rounds in his usual style, spotlighting an interesting story and related posts on Barack Obama’s aunt Zeituni Onyango (I’ve deleted the “update” notations): MAYBE SOMEBODY SHOULD SPREAD SOME WEALTH AROUND IN HIS OWN FAMILY: Obama Aunt Found in Rundown Boston Slum. Zeituni Onyango, the aunt so affectionately described in Mr Obama’s best-selling memoir Dreams from My Father, lives in a disabled-access flat on a rundown »

After Barack Obama clinched the Democratic presidential nomination this past June, I set out a comparison between Minnesota Fifth District Rep. Keith Ellison and Barack Obama. (Minnesota’s Fifth District covers Minneapolis and its inner-ring suburbs.) I think the comparison remains both valid and illuminating. I am taking the liberty of revisiting my argument this morning. Watching the emergence of Barack Obama this year I have experienced at least a slight »

David Broder writes: “Because McCain could not create a coherent philosophy or vision of his own, he allowed Obama and the Democrats to convince voters of a falsehood: that electing McCain would in effect reward Bush with a third term.” To the extent that Obama convinced voters that a McCain administration would approximate a third term of President Bush, he succeeded for three reasons: (1) McCain is more like Bush »

Ed Whelan takes a look at the consequences of an Obama victory for the Supreme Court. The consequences aren’t pretty. Some conservatives downplay the likely impact of an Obama victory, noting that the judges he is most likely to replace are liberal devotees of a “living Constitution.” Whelan has several responses. First, the Court needs to improve and can’t unless McCain wins. In Whelan’s view, with the Court as it »

In response to criticism of the Washington Post’s Anne Applebaum following her endorsement of Barack Obama, David Frum asks: “How small has the house of conservatism shrunk when it can find no room for Anne Applebaum. . .this generation’s greatest living expert on the crimes of communism?” One can be a conservative and sit this election out (though that would be a bad decision). One can also be a conservative »